Speaker 1: Today. It all happens.
Speaker 2: We may not have a result for Wednesday, Thursday or Friday,
Speaker 2: but nonetheless it happens on a week from today. Joining
Speaker 2: you and I now is Frank Lrose, who is the
Speaker 2: Ohio Secretary of State. He's in charge of all eighty
Speaker 2: eight county elections. And Frank LaRose, welcome again to the
Speaker 2: Bill Cunningham Show. And first of all, I had on
Speaker 2: yesterday Sherry Poland, the excellent executive director of the Hamley
Speaker 2: County Board of Elections. She gave us some numbers, So
Speaker 2: can you give the American people some numbers about from
Speaker 2: the Secretary of State's perspective, how many have voted by
Speaker 2: mail at this point a week out, how many have
Speaker 2: walked in? How many ballots are out there not yet
Speaker 2: return I need all that information.
Speaker 1: Give me a full report.
Speaker 3: Yes, sir, and you're right. Sherry is one of the
Speaker 3: best in the business. We're honored to have her. And
Speaker 3: by the way, in Ohio, we will give you the
Speaker 3: results on election night. We brew a pot of coffee
Speaker 3: and stay up late and do our work avail. All
Speaker 3: this information is available on our website as well, which
Speaker 3: is ohiosos dot gov slash data we've got an all
Speaker 3: new data dashboard. And so what this tells us is
Speaker 3: that at this point, as of our last update several
Speaker 3: hours ago, one point one million Ohioans have requested an
Speaker 3: AST ballot, about seven hundred thousand have returned their asketee ballot.
Speaker 3: That means sixty five percent of people that have requested
Speaker 3: their ballot have actually sent it back in. So if
Speaker 3: if it's sitting on your dashboard or sitting on your
Speaker 3: kitchen table, make sure to get it in the mail.
Speaker 3: It's got to get postmarked by next Monday, but no
Speaker 3: reason to wait. Early in person voting has been strong
Speaker 3: as well. Nine hundred and forty one thousand Ohioans have
Speaker 3: taken advantage of early voting. And so when you combine
Speaker 3: early in absentee voting one point six to eight million Ohioans,
Speaker 3: one point six to eight million Ohiolands have already voted.
Speaker 3: But Lilly, here's the number that I think is really
Speaker 3: interesting as well. Republicans are outpacing Democrats in both early
Speaker 3: and absentee voting by by a lot. Right, five hundred thousand,
Speaker 3: five hundred and fifteen thousand Republicans have already voted early.
Speaker 3: Only three hundred and forty nine thousand Democrats have. Now,
Speaker 3: this is not the way it used to be. It
Speaker 3: used to be if Republicans were not trailing by too
Speaker 3: much when the polls opens on election day, we felt
Speaker 3: pretty good about it. The fact that Republicans are leading
Speaker 3: Democrats by this number in early voting, I think says
Speaker 3: a lot.
Speaker 2: So you're saying that at this point, this Tuesday afternoon,
Speaker 2: and they got another week to go, that grossly more
Speaker 2: Republicans have early voted than Democrats, and that's quite unusual,
Speaker 2: it is.
Speaker 3: And by the way, that's registered Republicans, so that means
Speaker 3: you have to be the only way to be a
Speaker 3: registered Republican means you vote in the primaries, or a
Speaker 3: registered Democrat for that matter. And so of course there's
Speaker 3: a large number of what we call unaffiliated voters that
Speaker 3: just don't vote in spring primaries, so they don't show
Speaker 3: up with a partisan affiliation. But among registered Republicans it
Speaker 3: is one data metric. But among registered Republicans we are
Speaker 3: outpacing registered Democrats by well over one hundred thousand votes
Speaker 3: right now.
Speaker 2: So if one point seven million approximately have already voted
Speaker 2: either returned, there are ballots, which is about seven hundred thousand,
Speaker 2: and then those who vote in person, the numbers about
Speaker 2: one point seven million. By the end of business today,
Speaker 2: it'll probably be right out one point seven million. Can
Speaker 2: you extrapolate from that by Monday close of business how
Speaker 2: many Ohiglands would have voted early, either in person or
Speaker 2: buy the mail.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I'm not gonna hazard a guess on that, because invariably,
Speaker 3: if I'm a little low, then the mainstream media says
Speaker 3: he's predicting low turnout. And if I'm a little high,
Speaker 3: then people say, oh, he doesn't know what he's talking about.
Speaker 3: I will say this, the numbers are really strong. They're
Speaker 3: on par with what we've seen in past elections, and
Speaker 3: I think we're on pace to have another record breaking election.
Speaker 3: I'll say this too. Regardless, the boards of elections are ready.
Speaker 3: If people decide to wait and come on Tuesday, we'll
Speaker 3: be ready for that. If we have a large turnout
Speaker 3: this weekend, for example, there may be lines. You got
Speaker 3: to be smart about this. If you decide to show
Speaker 3: up on Saturday afternoon to the early voting center, that's
Speaker 3: the highest traffic time, so you're probably gonna wait line.
Speaker 3: If you go on Thursday afternoon, at three pm. You're
Speaker 3: not likely to see lines at the early voting location then,
Speaker 3: So again, whatever you do, we'll be ready to make
Speaker 3: sure that you have an honest vote and that it's
Speaker 3: convenient in Ohio.
Speaker 2: Now let's talk gross numbers. I like to deal with facts.
Speaker 2: Some deal with hyperbole. I deal with facts. There's about
Speaker 2: twelve million Ohioans alive right now, about twelve million, and
Speaker 2: I would assume there's about three million underage of eighteen.
Speaker 2: Hopefully they're not voting. So this election is similar to
Speaker 2: what happened in twenty twenty or a little bit more.
Speaker 2: What's going to be in your guestimation, the total turnout,
Speaker 2: the total number of votes casting this election is approximately what.
Speaker 3: Yeah, again, that's not a number that I like to pardicularly,
Speaker 3: but i'd saying I'll say this. We set a record
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty, the all time highest turnout election, by
Speaker 3: the way, an election where in Ohio Republicans did very well.
Speaker 3: So don't let anybody say that high turnout benefits the Democrats.
Speaker 3: When Ohio and show up in large numbers, actually usually
Speaker 3: votes well for Republicans. But we set a record in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty, we may break that record this.
Speaker 1: Year, which is what what's the record?
Speaker 2: Oh, gosh, have like seventy seventy five something?
Speaker 3: That was it was, it was something in that in
Speaker 3: that area.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's talk about lawsuits. I see in Virginia, Glenn
Speaker 2: Youngkin is being sued. They were about eighteen hundred to
Speaker 2: persons living in Virginia who self identified as not able
Speaker 2: to vote because they're not citizens. There's a federal law
Speaker 2: that says to vote, you have to be a US citizen. Now,
Speaker 2: in Virginia, he said, well, I got seventeen hundred so
Speaker 2: called human beings living in Virginia who admit they're not citizens.
Speaker 2: Therefore I'm taking them off the voter rolls. The federal
Speaker 2: government sued the governor, saying, wait a minute, you can't
Speaker 2: do that. You can't take off non citizens from voter rules.
Speaker 2: Tell me in Ohio what's happening in that regard.
Speaker 3: So in Ohio we have been working to remove non
Speaker 3: citizens as well. It hasn't gotten as much attention because
Speaker 3: they haven't sued US. I think that's probably because the
Speaker 3: way that we structured it in Ohio was narrowly crafted
Speaker 3: to make sure that we could remove non citizens from
Speaker 3: the voter roles without at the same time getting into
Speaker 3: the crosshairs of DJ Here's how we've done it. We
Speaker 3: do it on an individual basis. When we first of all,
Speaker 3: we work to prevent non citizens from ever becoming register,
Speaker 3: but if they do get registered within a week or two,
Speaker 3: we have removed them because we check the voter rules
Speaker 3: on the front end. As new registrations come in, we
Speaker 3: verify them against the Ohio BMV database, against the single
Speaker 3: federal database they let us choose. I'm trying to get
Speaker 3: access to the other ones, and if we flag them
Speaker 3: as a non citizen, we do further investigation, and then
Speaker 3: we individually investigate those and instruct the boards on a
Speaker 3: one on one basis to remove them from the rules.
Speaker 3: Since just the last couple of months, I've removed over
Speaker 3: seven hundred non citizens from the voter rules. And so
Speaker 3: when Democrats say that there's no such thing as non
Speaker 3: citizens attempting to register to vote, that's hogwash. We found it.
Speaker 3: Seven hundred out of twelve million is a relatively small number.
Speaker 3: But we're not going to just allow that kind of
Speaker 3: crime to accer in Ohio. We're going to identify it,
Speaker 3: remove them from the rules, and we been doing it
Speaker 3: in a way that I'm confident is consistent, although DJ
Speaker 3: is definitely sneaking around, sniffing around, if you will, Ohio,
Speaker 3: and trying to find me messing up so that they
Speaker 3: can file a lawsuit here as well. We're not going
Speaker 3: to give them that pleasure.
Speaker 2: Why would the DOJ not agree with you that non
Speaker 2: citizens shouldn't vote? So when you take them off, how
Speaker 2: come for Genuoue sued and you weren't sued.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I'll give you their public argument. They say, well,
Speaker 3: you may be accidentally ensnaring a small number that have
Speaker 3: recently become naturalized. Of course, we have safeguards in place
Speaker 3: to make sure that that doesn't happen. But you know,
Speaker 3: if one were a skeptic, they could say, perhaps that
Speaker 3: the same administration that has left our southern border completely
Speaker 3: unguarded and has resulted in a really national embarrassment and disaster,
Speaker 3: this invasion that's occurring on our southern border, one might
Speaker 3: draw the conclusion that folks in the Biden Harris administration
Speaker 3: want those people to vote. You know, that's a wild thing,
Speaker 3: but it's entirely possible. Idea, We're not going to allow
Speaker 3: that to happen in Ohio.
Speaker 2: And so at this point you're not been sued yet,
Speaker 2: but they're looking over your shoulder to find some reason
Speaker 2: to sue you.
Speaker 1: But is the statement accurate?
Speaker 2: If I would say this, non citizens in America cannot
Speaker 2: legally vote, is that accurate?
Speaker 3: That's correct, that's correct.
Speaker 2: So why wouldn't the federal government join with you and
Speaker 2: making sure your data who can vote is shared with
Speaker 2: you so that you get them off get them off
Speaker 2: their roles.
Speaker 1: Why doesn't that happen?
Speaker 3: Some things defy logic, Willy. I mean, here's the thing.
Speaker 3: I've been working to try to get access to better
Speaker 3: data from the federal government, and they have blocked me
Speaker 3: at every turn. For months now. I've been asking them
Speaker 3: for access to the other three databases. Typical federal government.
Speaker 3: They don't just have one database for non citizens, It's
Speaker 3: spread across four. They've only given me access to one
Speaker 3: of those databases, which is of course therefore incomplete. When
Speaker 3: I've been asking for months and months, they have stonewalled
Speaker 3: and ignored us. When we finally got our congressional delegation involved,
Speaker 3: my friend, Congressman Jim Jordan got involved and we were
Speaker 3: able to finally rattle their cage enough that they answered
Speaker 3: us and they said no, we will not let you
Speaker 3: access these databases. And so I had no choice but
Speaker 3: to file a lawsuit against DHS. That's what we did
Speaker 3: last week to get them to cough up this data
Speaker 3: which federal law says they must provide us.
Speaker 2: And they want to slow roll this until maybe Wednesday
Speaker 2: of next week.
Speaker 3: Well one with guess. But here's the thing. This is
Speaker 3: important regardless of whether we get the access to this
Speaker 3: before or after this election, because after the election, we
Speaker 3: go into enforcement mode and we want to look at
Speaker 3: the voter rules and if somebody has attempted to cast
Speaker 3: a ballot on behalf of a deceased Ohio and we
Speaker 3: want to make sure they face justice for it. If
Speaker 3: somebody's attempted to vote in Ohio and in another state,
Speaker 3: we want to catch them. And if a non citizen
Speaker 3: has in fact attempted to or even cast a ballot
Speaker 3: in Ohio, we need to detect that so we can
Speaker 3: turn that over to county prosecutors and to the Ohio
Speaker 3: Attorney General. Because when a law is not enforced, Lily,
Speaker 3: it's not a law, it's suggestion. And we will make
Speaker 3: sure even if it's small numbers that people face justice
Speaker 3: for those kinds of elections crimes.
Speaker 2: And when this issue arises, I hear Mary Garland or
Speaker 2: hear Kamala Harris talk about voter intimidation, that by you
Speaker 2: enforcing the law, you're intimidating voters. Can you respond to
Speaker 2: the voter intimidation argument.
Speaker 3: Well, I tell you who I intend to intimidate. I
Speaker 3: intend to I want to intimidate those who are attempting
Speaker 3: to break our law. And so if you are a
Speaker 3: non citizen and you're thinking about trying to cast a vote,
Speaker 3: I want you to be intimidated. If you are somebody
Speaker 3: who is planning to cast a ballot on or try
Speaker 3: to cast a ballot on behalf of a deceased person,
Speaker 3: I want you to be intimidated. And the Left and
Speaker 3: all of their handwringing about this is well, it's really nonsense.
Speaker 3: Ohioan's no. Americans know that it's easy to vote. My
Speaker 3: job is to also make sure that it's hard to cheat.
Speaker 2: Let's move on quickly to State Issue one. Can you
Speaker 2: briefly describe to the American people what is State Issue
Speaker 2: one and what.
Speaker 1: It does it say and what doesn't.
Speaker 3: It say yes. So. Issue one is a thirteen thousand
Speaker 3: word constitutional amendment that is being paid for by out
Speaker 3: of state special interests to the tune of over thirty
Speaker 3: million dollars. Eighty five percent of those dollars come from Washington,
Speaker 3: New York, California. And we even believe that six million
Speaker 3: of those dollars have come from a Swiss billionaire, literally,
Speaker 3: a guy from Switzerland that wants to tell us how
Speaker 3: our district line should be drawn. This thing, beyond being complex,
Speaker 3: takes away the power from the voters. It puts the
Speaker 3: power into the hand of fifteen unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats. And
Speaker 3: here's the kicker willing. You cannot fire these people. You
Speaker 3: cannot remove them from their job, even for malfeasance, for
Speaker 3: committing a crime. Nothing can take their ability to draw
Speaker 3: these lines away from them once they're appointed to it.
Speaker 3: And you're not even allowed to talk to them. I
Speaker 3: think this is a clear First Amendment violation. But the
Speaker 3: amendment literally says that if you discuss redistricting with one
Speaker 3: of these members of the redistricting Commission, that you violated
Speaker 3: the Law's crazy. So if you sit next to them
Speaker 3: in church and you have a comment to make you're
Speaker 3: not allowed to talk to them about the work that
Speaker 3: they do, that they're being paid for to do by
Speaker 3: the taxpayers. What they're really required to do under Issue
Speaker 3: one is to jerrymander the state to draw a certain
Speaker 3: number of democratic districts that they preconceive as their formula.
Speaker 3: I think this is really bad news for Ohio, and
Speaker 3: that's why we've been very clear about this. And that's why,
Speaker 3: by the way, also we drafted very honest, very blunt,
Speaker 3: but very honest language that's on the ballot. It has
Speaker 3: been approved as truthful by the Ohio Supreme Court. And
Speaker 3: so if you read the few hundred words on your
Speaker 3: ballots that describe what this thing does, I think you'll
Speaker 3: arrive at the same conclusion I have.
Speaker 2: All the polling indicates is going to be a yes
Speaker 2: vote because citizens respond, the term jerry mandering is used.
Speaker 2: The citizens respond, but stated briefly. They're seven members of
Speaker 2: the Reapportionment Board. They are the governor, the Secretary State,
Speaker 2: and the auditor, and two from the House, two from
Speaker 2: the Senate that we as lowly citizens actually vote for.
Speaker 2: We decide who's on the Reapporcement poard. This amendment would say,
Speaker 2: no more voting. You don't get to vote anymore. And
Speaker 2: there's going to be retired appellate judges like my wife,
Speaker 2: for example. If you won't take it, but nonetheless retired
Speaker 2: to pellate judges in Ohio will appoint five Republicans, five Democrats.
Speaker 2: They then appoint five independence fifteen get together that we
Speaker 2: don't vote for, and they will draw. You can't fire,
Speaker 2: and you can't fire them. You can't fire, you can't
Speaker 2: let them go.
Speaker 3: Did Trump as a smart executive, has said in the
Speaker 3: past that if you can't fire somebody, they don't actually
Speaker 3: work for you. And that's the problem with these unelected,
Speaker 3: unaccountable bureaucrats. You cannot bounce them from their jobs, no
Speaker 3: matter how bad of a job they do. If you
Speaker 3: don't like the way the governor and the auditor and
Speaker 3: I and the two members of the House and the
Speaker 3: two members of send, if you don't like the way
Speaker 3: we draw district lines, you can fire us. And guess what,
Speaker 3: Ohioans didn't do that In twenty twenty one, we drew
Speaker 3: new district lines and I got more votes than any
Speaker 3: secretary's has ever gotten in history. So people must like
Speaker 3: the work that we do in totality and decided to
Speaker 3: keep us around.
Speaker 1: But at least we vote.
Speaker 2: You know, I love you politically, that's great. But if
Speaker 2: Tony Bender is a left winger from Green Township and
Speaker 2: he says, I've had it with Frank LeRose, I've had
Speaker 2: it with Mike Dwaine. I want those guys gone. They
Speaker 2: got the opportunity to say I'm voting against that guy.
Speaker 2: If this thing passes, the voting is done, democracy dies
Speaker 2: in darkness and because of Swiss billionaires and a slick
Speaker 2: commercial run by a defroct Supreme Court justice named Ren O'Connor,
Speaker 2: who's as an effective ad but it's wrong. But nonetheless,
Speaker 2: if citizens are led to believe that democracy is alive
Speaker 2: by not voting, you can vote yes on Issue one
Speaker 2: and the voting is done, and then it becomes it's
Speaker 2: in the constitution and away we go and God help
Speaker 2: us all. Well, Frank, we got a run. But thanks
Speaker 2: for calling in today this afternoon, and we'll see what happens.
Speaker 2: But I often say we get the government we deserve,
Speaker 2: and at times that concerns me greatly.
Speaker 1: But we'll see what happens.
Speaker 2: Vote no in state Issue one because if you want
Speaker 2: to vote in the future for the members of this board.
Speaker 1: Vote no.
Speaker 2: If you don't want to vote anymore, vote yes. Democracy
Speaker 2: will live in darkness. But Frank la Russ, once again,
Speaker 2: thank you for coming on the Bill Cunningham Show. Maybe
Speaker 2: we'll check in next week as things are hot and heavy,
Speaker 2: and thank.
Speaker 3: You Frank, Thank you, sir. God bless and.
Speaker 1: God bless America.
Speaker 2: Let's continue with more, very simple six million dollars in
Speaker 2: TV ads to convince Ohio ones it is time to
Speaker 2: quit voting.
Speaker 1: What and maybe it's working. I hope not. Let's continue.
Speaker 2: My comments are next to more at your home of
Speaker 2: the Bengals News Radio seven hundred WLW.
Speaker 1: There's more to sports than scores and stats. There's emotion
Speaker 1: about your tears, God.
Speaker 2: Leading the moments you'll always remember, Mark Hamlin into the ambulance.
Speaker 1: And the accomplishment, the park home run Morelly Bay.
Speaker 3: Or clue, unbelievable place, two yards, two bah Join me
Speaker 3: Lance mcaviister as we cover them all on Sports Talk
Speaker 3: tonight in six on seven hundred WLW.
Speaker 2: Your first words after a stroke, your first step since
Speaker 2: a spinal cord injury, your last